The Tiresias Effect
by amor-remanet
Summary: Spencer's different. This, he should be used to … It should be simple, but it isn't." Genderqueer!Reid fic; WARNING: explicit discussion of gender identity issues, several possible triggers.
1. Chapter 1: Tiresias Rising

When he first arrives up at Cal Tech, Spencer is thirteen and awkward; the latter is nothing new, but here it feels different. Maybe it's California. Something about the air here isn't like Nevada — when he comes home to his dorm (a single room; he didn't think claiming that the nature of his genius required being alone would work), he doesn't need to worry about his mother. If she's having an episode, he's none the wiser. He writes her letters every day; she never sends any back. It's easier to breathe without her here. Sometimes, Spencer worries — what if she didn't eat today? What if she's having an episode and no one's checking in on her? What if he's doing too much homework and can't call her? What if she needs to hear his voice and she can't because he's up to his eyes in William James? — but, overwhelmingly, he settles in quite nicely.

Every few days, Spencer has to meet with his faculty adviser, Dr. Clements, and Ms. Mestre from the Dean of Students' office. It's nothing about _him_, they say; it's just a precaution that's in place because he's so young. A thirteen-year-old prodigy at Cal Tech is a wonderful thing… and, yes, it's true that he's a genius, but because he's so young and his parents are so often unavailable, they just need to make sure that he's _adjusting_. They use words like that to describe the process of fitting in, but Spencer doesn't fit in with anyone he's met here. Professors don't mind him, but they leave at the end of the day. Most days, he manages to convince Clements and Mestre that everything's fine. He smiles the way he always has, nods, tells them lies about his social life, when really he scarcely talks to anyone when he doesn't need to do so, let alone risk them figuring out what's wrong with him. When he can't manage to seem unfazed, he just says it's his mother. What it is sounds stupid, especially to him.

Buying new clothes for school hadn't occurred to him — but Spencer knows it should have, now he knows this with a painfully accurate awareness. There's nothing to be done, at this point. All of his shirts are too snug for his liking anymore. He hasn't even filled them out that much. There's nothing that anyone might see and be interested in at all, let alone like. He just doesn't like the way they fit anymore. He needs new pants — they're all too short, but that isn't what bothers him. What bothers him shouldn't even be an issue, because it isn't new. Besides that, no other boys have trouble like this. His new graduating class lacks the jocks he went to high school with, the muscle-bound football players who'd torment him the way they had, but everyone here still seems comfortable with his or her body, with their primary and secondary sex characteristics, and with the implications of their forms. There are a few girls, who don't eat enough, and one who takes forever brushing her teeth after every meal Spencer sees her at. There's a guy in his general chemistry class who's rather heavy, who moves as awkwardly as Spencer does, trying to hide his bulbous shape.

Spencer's different. This, he should be used to, it's defined him since he can remember. But even _this_ is different from the difference to which he's grown accustomed. It should be simple, but it isn't.

Male — XY, more aggressive, less likely to ask for directions, more restrained in displaying emotions, especially when said displays may be seen as 'weak.' More visual/spatial aptitude, more proficiency with the sciences. Beyond the aggression, Spencer sees himself in this description: he doesn't like his emotions being visible; he doesn't like to ask for help; he speaks math as a second language. On the other hand, though, Female — XX, softer, fairer, more emotionally aware and sensitive, called inferior by some, but by others regarded as possessors of a quiet sort of strength. Women lead the household when the men are gone, they teach the children and see to it that everyone's basic needs are met. They live longer, but break down more often. More suicide attempts are white females, but men succeed more often because men cut to the chase and go for guns.

Theoretically, there aren't any differences, beyond the anatomy, that matter. They're basically the same, or so says feminist logic — men and women are equal. They should get paid the same wages, they should be able to hold the same jobs. Men run away — Dad did, anyway, and they're more likely to succeed when they try to kill themselves. Dad couldn't handle Mom anymore, or her illness, so he left instead of try. Women, by contrast, go crazy and destroy their children — Niobe bragged and got her children shot; Clytemnestra killed her household when she killed her husband; Medea knifed her children for revenge; and Mom succumbed to schizophrenia (really, Spencer could have turned out much worse). Women lie, like Alexa Lisbon, who lured Spencer to certain torment; men make people suffer, like the football team who stripped him and tied him up.

There's nothing to be done, Spencer thinks. He's male, unfortunately. But he doesn't want to be either. Why should he have to choose between Achilles and Briseis when neither of them feels right? He doesn't want to be both — Hermaphroditos could be free to keep that feature. But Spencer still knows that something isn't right about how he feels. Would he could, he'd be Tiresias, with the ability to change as he sees fit. He can't, though. Mythological figures are stuck in the books he read as a kid. He can't, and so he shouldn't waste his time considering all of the what ifs.

When he leaves the window in his room open just right, on the windy nights where autumn fights spring for dominance, Spencer gets a little gust that's all his own. It doesn't rustle his papers, because he learns quickly how to keep everything controlled. Every time it hits, he shivers. First, he remembers that afternoon on the football field — he remembers the tears coming down his face as the players jostled him between them; he remembers their rough hands forcing the harsh fabric into his skin, how they stripped his clothes and the wind blew cold and wet, like these nights; he remembers how the damp grass rubbed his bare feet, how the dirt seemed to slip beneath them, and how he tried to struggle when they tried to tie him up; he remembers how the thin rope from a tetherball rubbed his wrists until they were red and his skin exposed.

More than anything else, he remembers being naked in front of all those people. No one even tried to stop it when his clothes came off; they all just stood there, _watching_. Like a painting in a museum, they scrutinized every inch of him and turned their heads to get a better view. Luckily, it wasn't raining. The chill and the wind and the cruel laughter were all bad enough. Every time a breeze hit him below the waist, he winced, and cried harder, until the well of tears dried up. Remembering what he had down there felt wrong; briefly, he'd wished for rain, just to see if it would clean him off. Being swallowed by the earth would have also been acceptable. Even in California, recalling these things makes him cry.

But, as all things, these phantoms pass. He tightens his fingers on his textbook and the edges press into his fingers, reminding him that they're real. This book is real, and the memories aren't. They happened, and they're dead now, and Spencer cocoons himself in the sweater that he stole from Mom — he curls up and hides in the excess of fabric, and it's a comfort, even though no one's here to see what his body looks like.

~*~

**Masturbation.** Noun. _**1.**__ the stimulation or manipulation of one's own genitals, esp. to orgasm; sexual self-gratification. __**2.**__ the stimulation, by manual or other means exclusive of coitus, of another's genitals, esp. to orgasm._ Related forms: masturbational, masturbatory.

Spencer has known what masturbation is since he was six. Mom had taken him to the library, one Saturday, because she said that they hadn't spent enough Saturdays together recently. She didn't want him playing with Jeff and Ethan; she wanted him to adventure through books with her, and thrill her with his special mind. He started reading the M-words in the dictionary, and that one caught his interest, for being the only word he didn't immediately grasp. So he found books about it while Mom was distracted with Margery Kemp, and he wasn't entirely put off. None of it just seemed to fit together, and rather than disappoint Mom by looking stupid by not understanding something, he went and read _Through the Looking-Glass_ instead.

In his second year at Cal Tech, Spencer really learns what this word means, and he learns because of Penelope Garcia. She's older, but a year behind him, and confusing is the best word he has for her.

The summer was awful to him: Mom's episodes got worse than he'd ever seen upon his return to Vegas, and on top of that, puberty hit him like a fist in his face. His voice cracked, then got deeper. He got taller. And, worst of all, there were angles coming out of nowhere — he's always been tall for his age, and thin, but now his body had a mind of its own. Some days, he hardly moved, because his limbs hurt so much and when Ethan's mom took them shopping for new clothes, Spencer purposefully hunted down items with looser cuts, sometimes even going the next size up. Any hope he had of never needing to pick a side, select a gender to stick to and stay there, extinguished when his hips started narrowing, compared to his chest and shoulders.

At least it wasn't all that noticeable. Still isn't. The woman at the checkout that day eyed him, and he could guess what she was thinking, because there were probably only two plausible options: A. what on earth was he doing, being so young and buying clothes for himself; or B. hopefully, he was buying the bigger clothes because he hoped to gain weight and fill them out soon enough. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Being skinny opens up a world of potential hurt, in that so many people will usually be bigger than you, and can use your size to their advantage — but, as Spencer notices in the full-length, fitting room mirrors, the less mass that he has on him, the less of a difference he can see. There are fewer secondary sex characteristics this way.

In the cafeteria, he starts taking cues from the girls he's concluded all have some kind of eating disorder. Should it be alarming, how easy he finds it to only grab a salad and spend most of lunchtime picking at it, rather than eating? Probably, but it's not like he hasn't skipped meals before, either because he got caught up working or, when he was younger, because Mom couldn't cook and he wasn't supposed to be in the kitchen by himself.

Some days are harder than others. Ever day, regardless of the effort he puts in, he's hungry to some degree or other, which makes sense. His body's growing, and it's changing, and it needs more nourishment than he necessarily provides. While still getting taller, he loses weight, and the effect is an odd one: all his angles start finding a new emphasis, but without anything extra on his torso, it isn't necessarily masculine or feminine. It looks more the former than the latter, but with his hair and the right clothing, he could pass as either. To his credit, he makes sure to see that he doesn't go _too_ wanting for nutrition. All his meals are well-balanced, except breakfast, which generally consists of Cheerios and heavily-sugared coffee. Besides that, he's read medical books before. He knows what will happen to him if he doesn't eat enough — he knows that the empty, gnawing feeling of hunger will progress to pain, suffering, organ systems failing. And so he doesn't eat too little. He simply doesn't eat a lot… which is exactly why Penelope Garcia picks him out.

One day in late September, they bump into each other in the dining hall lunch line. Spencer smiles and apologizes; she smiles and says it's nothing. She's everything he isn't: confident and bold enough to wear loud prints and bright colors; proud of her body and the different things that define her as a woman — two of which are shoved out right under Spencer's nose. Whenever they get close, his stomach twists uncomfortably and he feels bad for looking at them, he knows that girls don't like that, but they _are_ right there. Difficulty is the word of the day, and it crops up in trying to avoid them. Besides, she notices, and all she does is smirk and muss his hair.

"Careful where you look, kiddo," she says in a low voice as they approach the cashier. "You never know — I might have the Ark of the Covenant hidden under this top."

"…Like the Biblical Ark of the Covenant?" he asks her.

"Like the one from Indiana Jones, sweetheart." The clarity was necessary, but at least he knows the movie. Jeff's mom took them and Ethan to see it once, when _The Last Crusade_ came out and a local theater ran a triple feature of the series. "And then I might shift _just so_ and your pretty little head will get incinerated by the full glory and wrath of God. And that'd just be messy, so no one wants it, you know?"

He laughs, because she means it to be funny, but he can't help but think he wouldn't mind seeing her aforementioned shift of posture, and catching a glimpse of whatever he could before his head explodes.

About a week later, maybe ten days, she seeks him out and sits with him in the dining hall, coming over to him and sitting at his table. It's not as though he can tell her "no." With barely any exceptions, he always sits alone. On her face is a smile that says she's planning something, and on her tray is easily enough food for the both of them. Before he can say something he'd probably regret, she decides to give him orders.

"Eat," she tells him, picking up one of the plates and nudging it toward him. The smell of so-called 'herb-roasted chicken' and asparagus cudgels him upside the head and his stomach whispers to his brain, _No, really, what's the harm in it?_ Harm? No harm. He just shouldn't — well, he should. He should always eat — but he _can't_, and his brain knows that.

Penelope Garcia does not understand this. When he tries to say that, really, he's fine with just a salad, she interjects: "Baby boy, if I wanted to, I could snap you like a twig by looking at you funny. It just so happens that I'm a kind and loving goddess, and not a vengeful one. _Eat_."

"You know, seriously, Penelope?" he hazards. "I mean, it's not that I don't understand what you're doing, or that I don't appreciate it… but I'm fine. I have an IQ of 187, and an eidetic memory, and even if I didn't, I think that I know how to take care of myself."

"Oh. Really. Is that why you're the envy of Rachel Gardner and her friends?" Penelope raises her eyebrows and looks over in the direction of another table. Surrounded by plastic bottles filled with varying brands of water, Rachel Gardner — five-foot-seven, weighing not nearly enough for her height, likely failing the English class that she and Spencer share and, perhaps, heading for an intervention — and four other girls sit huddled like a circle of mystics. All of them have more angles to them than the curves that characterize Penelope's femininity; they look more like Spencer. For a moment, he startles and he gapes at her.

"I'm _fine_," he insists. "I know, I do, I'm — I'm the weird genius kid, and maybe I'm a little skinny, but I'm—"

He stops talking when she shoves a spear of asparagus into his mouth. Even though he chews it, he frowns at her and wrinkles up his nose. She smirks like the cat in the canary cage and pokes him in the nose. "See?" she tells him. "You're cute when you cooperate."

Penelope invites herself to the rest of lunch, and then along for the rest of the week. Every day, she leaves first and Spencer waits for the sound of the other shoe hitting the floor. Besides Jeff and Ethan, no friends have ever lasted. Even Jeff and Ethan are sort of questionable; they talk so much less when Spencer's in California. But Penelope keeps coming and, some several Mondays later, when she goes, she leaves behind a pen with a pink feather on the end.

Alone in his room later, Spencer can't look away from the pen. Five minutes of physics, one of staring at the pen. Five more of physics, two of needlessly fingering the cool, clear, colored plastic. Four minutes of mechanics problems he hardly _needs_ to spend such time on, three of brushing the feather under his nose — oh, _God_, it still smells like her perfume and hairspray… Spencer pales; his stomach churns. Narrowing his eyes, he pulls the atrocious thing away and glares at it like a kitten at a piece of string just beyond its reach. It's just a pen. It shouldn't make his heart beat like this, or have this kind of effect on his stomach.

(He's gained some weight in the weeks they've eaten lunch together, and he's not the only one who's noticed. Penelope loves it; Dr. Clements and Ms. Mestre were thrilled at his last meeting with them, breaking all of their starched formality. Spencer knows he shouldn't think this way, but, really, he can't _stand_ looking so masculine as it makes him look.)

Five minutes of physics, and then he brushes the feather up and down his cheek. He jiggles the pen, trying to bring out the optical illusion of it bending. He inhales that scent again, and when he closes his eyes, Spencer can almost _see_ Penelope's broad, toothy grin, can almost hear the bubbly cadence of her laugh. He _feels_ —

He feels his hands in a fevered rush, yanking open the button and pulling down the zip — he wriggles and nudges his jeans down around his thighs. Without his full consent, his hand vanishes into his underwear. It wraps around an erection; why don't they make guidebooks for this? _God_, her _smile_, it's like watching the formation of a nebula — it explodes beautifully. He yelps. He wonders how he learned to do this. It wasn't from the dictionary. His heart races, his breath hitches.

His hand is covered in ejaculate. He slumps back against his chair and, shaking, stares at the wall. He's male after all.

~*~

Spencer makes a mistake with Penelope Garcia: he lets her worm into somewhere in his heart.

He knows better than to do something like this; wishes in fairy tales never have the intended outcomes when those making them don't work for them. He knows that nothing good can just happen without someone working for it, something he didn't do to get Penelope in his life, and, despite this, Spencer wonders if, maybe, she might stay around for ever. For several years, he's had Jeff and Ethan, but he's never had a best friend. Maybe, he thinks, she could be his best friend. Maybe they can have lunch together all the time — he would like that.

He lets himself think on her more often, and he lets himself wonder if, maybe, something could happen with them — nothing sexual, of course. It would be massively illegal, as of yet, and he has no desire to get her into trouble. But she likes him well enough to act like he's a person, not just a brain with legs. And he likes her. And, despite his various neurotic objections (which he knows are neurotic and, as such, ought to be invalid; they aren't based in anything beyond his perceptions of reality, anyway, which no one else seems to readily agree with), he likes that she sits with him at lunch. Slowly, he comes not to mind the fact that, when he thinks of her, he feels _things_ between his legs that he'd rather not acknowledge — sexual things, _male_ things, which make normal, healthy sexuality feel _wrong_.

She makes him feel special and important, and, then, just as quickly as she entered his life, she leaves him. No explanation, no apparent reason, not even a note slipped under his dorm room door, more covertly than Dad's note left on the table — evanescent as a whisp of water vapor, she simply ceases to be. This conclusion, Spencer knows, is fallacious: matter can't be destroyed, only changed in form, and as such, Penelope hasn't ceased to be; she's only disappeared from his life, in a move to disprove one of his most basic theses of human gender differentiation. Men leave; women stay and go insane — if she could leave him, then this isn't true. There are no exceptions that prove the rules, only absolutes that reality proves to be false in their exclusion of possibilities.

It can't be that she's hiding, although he does consider the possibility. Someone like Penelope Garcia can't hide from anyone, nor does he think that she would really want to do so. She needs people to thrive and be happy, and from her size to her brightly colored wardrobe, from her styled mess of big, blonde hair to the feathered pens that she wears in it, she's a hard one to miss. This is where they differ, she and Spencer: he doesn't _need_ people. He doesn't want to need them. After a night spent ignoring his homework, playing with the feathered pen he never gave back, and wondering if the threat of tears would ever actualize in crying, he knows that he cannot allow these things to happen again. Coming to rely on people never works out for the better.

Even over the summer and moreso when fall semester descends upon him, Spencer abandons life for work with a fervor that his genius renders meaningless — little that he does is truly challenging, it all comes down to whether or not he chooses to out-achieve the classes' overachievers. Usually, he does. More and more, his time gets given to the library, and, as he used to do when Mom would take him to hers back in Nevada, he seeks out little corners he can call his own. He volunteers for extra assignments. He runs errands for professors, even ones who aren't his. He lets his pleasure reading list double in length. He takes drivers' ed courses at the nearest high school. He stays out of everyone's collective way, even Jeff's and Ethan's, even though they're here too, by his third year, and even though they know him better than anyone else. Even though they're eighteen, he's fifteen and getting thinner once again, and they could easily take him in a fight, if they so desired, Spencer avoids them.

Sequestering himself with books and things to learn, he lets the heavy weight of academia and research drag him further into its depths, and he's shocked at how much these actions come to sting. Once, Jeff tries to talk to him about it — Spencer's arms are laden down with things he's taking to the library, and Jeff catches him by the shoulder and turns him around in the middle of the quad. All of a sudden, Spencer's awareness of his surroundings jolts from 'barely any' to 'hyperacute' — the leaves are all done up in reds and golds and oranges. It's colder than he remembers it being yesterday. His sweater isn't nearly enough. Posters all around them say it should be Halloween soon, and Jeff's face looks different — more tired, more adult, more male, at least in the stubble on his chin. Does Ethan look like that too, Spencer wonders quietly, looking up at Jeff in a daze.

"What the Hell, Spencer?" he balks by way of greeting, looking as though Spencer has, somehow, just offended him. Skipping over the question _why don't I ever see you anymore_, he asks, "Come on, Ethan and I are going off-campus for dinner."

The subtext is still obvious — even to Spencer, it's obvious. "I — you know, I want to, Jeff," he excuses himself wearily, "but I… I really have to work on these assignments for class—"

"And _when_ are they due?" Jeff snaps.

An Achilles heel in this lie exposes itself, thus prompting further lies. "Tomorrow," Spencer says, knowing that they're really due next week. "I — I seriously procrastinated on getting them done… because of drivers' ed." He should probably be perturbed at how easy he finds lying to someone who's supposed to be his friend.

"Spencer… come on, you look like you haven't eaten in a week."

"That's ridiculous," Spencer informs him. He hasn't eaten anything substantial since yesterday morning, and then Sunday evening before that; there's a subtle but important difference. Not that Jeff understands it — he doesn't, and neither does Ethan. They don't understand and, because they've always felt at home in their own skin, or at the very least in the constraints of their gender, they _can't_. They don't even see the logic of why Spencer lets himself thin out, and carefully undoes the work Penelope did on him. All they know about what's going on is that, once again, he may be the envy of the cabal of skinny girls who sit together in the cafeteria with bottled water and empty trays.

Jeff tries to call him out for being so avoidant, but Spencer only begs off, inadvertently proving Jeff right. He scuttles away into the back corner of the library, sets his books down, and gets to work. Reading always comes easily to him. It sails by without him even noticing what's going on, although he absorbs the words with his usual proficiency. The completed assignments pile up, but there isn't any warm satisfaction to having seen them done. They only represent the fact that Spencer can wreak havoc on himself, forego eating as well as regular sleep, measure out everything in cups of coffee, and work himself to a frenzied numbness, and it still won't be enough to bring Penelope back or to change the body with which he's stuck. Shuddering, he looks around his books for something new to do, something as yet unassigned. As he turns a page in his physics textbook, Spencer plummets down, face first.

He doesn't know how long he stays asleep, or why it doesn't hurt him in his chest to have a dream about Penelope, but some time later, someone rouses him awake. There's a warm hand on his shoulder, holding him up against the back of his chair, and another one tapping his face, and a low, hurried voice snapping, "Spencer! …_Spencer_!"

He groans. His eyelids feel immovably heavy. Somehow, though, he managed to crack them open, only to shut them again when they're assaulted by the too-bright library lights.

"Jesus Christ, kid," Ethan sighs, holding fast to Spencer's shoulder, as though he feels Spencer might slip away. Even from back here, Spencer can smell the cigarettes and cheap beer lingering around him. "What the fuck have you been _doing_ to yourself?"

"Working himself into an early grave," Jeff chimes in with a huff. Spencer cracks his eyes open again to see Jeff collecting up his books.

"Put those _back_," he protests weakly, but not without the energy to argue. "I — I'm just _studying_, okay? I know being a freshman's easy enough, especially for _you_ guys, but I… I am in a _lot_ of difficult classes, and I… no, Jeff, I mean it, put those _back_, I am _studying_."

"You're coming back to my room," Ethan corrects him. "Then you're eating something, and _then_ you're going to get some sleep."

Spencer tries to shove past Ethan's hand. He tries to grab one of his books off the table, he doesn't even care which one

"You're acting pretty dumb for a genius, Spencer," he says, his calm almost unnatural. "You ought to be the first to know you're not a damn superhero. _Homo sapiens_ means you have _limits_. Do yourself a favor and start respecting them."

"_Homo sapiens sapiens_." He can't help wrinkling his nose in frustration as he amends Ethan's word choice, and the fact that Jeff visibly rolls his eyes and shakes his head doesn't help. Spencer's already been corrected and had his intelligence impugned tonight; he deserve to go and correct Ethan back.

Ethan just takes it as an invitation to thump on the back of Spencer's head.

The lesson learned here, Spencer thinks a few days later, as he stares across the table at Ethan and Jeff and the assortment of food they expect him to eat, is likely not what they intended him to glean… but, if this is what happens from not needing people, then he really needs to get better at acting like he does. The more normal he appears to be, the less likely things like this are to happen, and things like this cannot happen again. Everyone who has ever prodded Spencer has, no doubt, meant exceptionally well, but the end results are never, ever worth the effort. What's worst is that he can't forget anything to save his life.

~*~

Needing people is, if anything at all, a show of weakness, or so Spencer decides. Actively showing that one doesn't need people, however, is even worse because it makes people decide that they need to come and help him. So it goes — he gets through his undergraduate degrees because he has no other options; he goes on and gets his first PhD because it's that or trying to be sixteen and get a job. The best he could hope for would be obnoxiously erudite waiter, check out boy at a grocery store, or maybe answering the phone for a psychiatrist, who would probably forego giving him a paycheck in favor of giving him therapy. He keeps Jeff and Ethan around, because they make an effort, at least, to understand him (as much as he lets them see, anyway), and he makes routine visits home, but Spencer lets no one in behind the walls of his citadel, lest everything fall to ruin.

This continues until he's eighteen, working on his last PhD, the one in chemistry, when he meets Andy Forster.

She's a research librarian — a new one, and youngish, built larger, like Penelope was, but there's something different, something Spencer readily ignores during their first few (to his credit, brief) interactions. It's only when he notices that she was reading Chaucer before he came to ask about his inter-library loan books, when he engages her in a conversation about the development of love poetry from 'A Parliament of Fowles' onward, when he actually stops for long enough to really consider it that he sees what ought to have been obvious: she doesn't really _look_ feminine. The sound of her voice is a dead give-away, but otherwise, her appearance is a perfect balancing act…

Her hair is short, but not too short. Those Buddy Holly glasses could be a man's or a woman's, these days. That sweater betrays enough curves to _suggest_ femininity, but not enough to say it outright, and her slacks are pointedly neutral — Spencer takes it all in slowly as they converse, letting his eyes linger where they need to (which is everywhere). There has to be some way he can get this for himself. The past few years have been a Hell of Spencer's idiotic war against his body — one minute, he's healthy, but too male; the next, attempts at making himself androgynous wreck the health; maintaining any balance is the most difficult thing he's ever had to do, and yet, Andy Forster, Research Librarian, pulls it off with no apparent effort.

Like Garcia, she notices.

"Hey, Encyclopedia Brown," she snaps good-naturedly. When he looks back to her eyes, everything about her face is benevolent, and yet, he can't help feeling as though someone just caught him in the act of self-pleasure. "What's up, Doc?"

Spencer fumbles even worse than he did with Garcia. "I — I mean, I didn't — I just — I — I'm sorry?"

"It's okay, sweetheart," she tells him. "I know that look. Most people don't understand it. Do you want to hear the whole lecture or the short version? I'm about to go on a break anyway, if you want the long version."

Spencer definitely wants to hear the long version.

Following her lead and towering over her, he leaves the library. In silence, they go to a coffee shop off campus and, to his surprise, they both order black coffee and proceed to over-sugar it. Her smile suggests that she thinks he has good taste. Several questions nag at his tongue, but he isn't sure how to go about phrasing them without offending her more than he already has. He wants to look at her, but, instead, looks more at his coffee than at her eyes — again, he's already offended her. That's why they're here: he's offended her and he wants to learn better, why she has this pull, as irresistible as Jupiter's gravity.

"Calm down, Doc," she says softly. "Squeeze any harder and you'll have a lap full of hot mess."

Spencer nods and agrees, but it doesn't make him feel any better. "I… yeah, I — sorry, but… it's not like I always get caught… you know. Checking people out."

She smirks. "Honey, I've been checked out before, and you weren't checking me out. …I'll just start for you, how's that?" As soon as he nods, she sighs, and starts again: "It's called genderqueer. What I am, and how I identify, I mean. …It means different things for different people. For me, it's all about being both genders but neither, hence how I dress. But other people have all kinds of experiences with it… What it all comes down to is being out of place on the gender binary. Not fitting in with male or female, or feeling like they don't describe you properly. Like your own body's not right, for making you choose… Do you follow?"

Spencer nods and whispers to his coffee, "Yeah, I… I've — I feel the same way." Leaning in closer, looking perplexed, she asks him to repeat that. He's shaking as he looks back up to her, and he wonders how on earth she, Andy Forster, someone he hardly knows, makes him feel so comfortable. It makes sense, he guesses, in a textbook, BAs-in-Psychology-and-Sociology way: they have something important in common, so naturally, they can identify, which leads to comfort. After several deep breaths that fail to calm him down, he repeats it, louder: "I feel the same way."

Her smile softens and she takes his hand; he doesn't pull away. "I thought so."

"So what do I do?" he asks her, unable to help himself, only lowering his voice so no one else can hear them. "I mean, I — I'm, everyone else perceives me as a — do I have to do anything differently, I mean… how do you _be_ genderqueer?"

"Just be yourself," she tells him, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze. "Though… if you want to fish for tips on dressing for your comfort, you can come back to my place and I'll teach you."

Spencer agrees, and, by the end of the night, he's back in his room, wearing one of her sweaters. There's room in it to hide, and even though Spencer knows better than to enjoy this for too long, even though he knows that getting what you wish for without working for it never works, for once, he feels safe in his own skin.


	2. Chapter 2: Tiresias Falling

Perfect comfort does not come to Spencer easily (a fact that he expects and to which he is all too accustomed), but with work, he comes to find something like it. From Andy, he learns plenty that he already knew, put into easily digested phrases that, somehow, make more sense from her. **Rule One:** wear clothes that fit him loosely, which only follows logic. The less that people can see of his body, the fewer assumptions they can make about his gender or identity. Some of them won't like it, or accept it. Some will be uncomfortable. Ultimately, though, she assures him as she straightens his shirt for him, it's his comfort that matters, not everyone else's. **Rule Two:** as a corollary to the above, don't wear clothing loose enough to drown in or the assumptions that they make about him won't have anything to do with whether he'd biologically one way or the other.

"I don't have this problem," she clarifies, "but I've seen it happen to my friends, and with the way you're built, it's definitely a risk." Puzzled, Spencer asks after her meaning, and she tells him, "My first girlfriend tried to dress gender neutrally, but she wound up wearing everything _too_ big. Her parents tried to get her treated for an eating disorder she didn't have."

"Statistically speaking, that probably wouldn't happen to me," he points out. Watching himself in her mirror, Spencer does need to admit: this shirt isn't even that big on him and he still looks much thinner. This is not something he needs. Before he had Mom taken to Bennington, he couldn't visit home without at least one comment on how thin he admittedly is, and even now, he eats well enough to little effect on the fact that he's skinny. "Most eating disorder patients — to the point that there aren't even that many professional investigations into the phenomenon of male eating disorders — and the overwhelming public sentiment is that they're a 'female issue,' or... that only women fall victim to them."

Andy smiles and shakes her head, the way she always does when he spouts off something esoteric. "Doc, in the past nine weeks, I hope you've learned enough that everyone and their mother isn't going to just outright assume that you're biologically male."

There sits **Rule Three:** listen to Andy, and try to curb the urge to protest when he knows that she's most likely right. Spencer can't even contest this idea. Since he's started learning from her, there have been more incidents of people looking at him as though they're trying to figure out something important, and there's been a sudden increase in the rate at which people are surprised when they see the more masculine characteristics in his face, or hear him start rattling something off and betraying to everyone the nature of his biological sex.

They tilt their heads and knot their brows. They ask him to repeat things, brushing it off as though they simply couldn't hear him, and when he does, they don't look any less confused. They inquire as to his name and once they know it — Spencer William Reid, nearly three-time doctorate — they nod and try to look as though they aren't uncomfortable, as though they know now that he's male and must now act as though they always knew. Not everyone falls into these categories, Spencer knows. Surely, their reasons must be as widely varied as they are, themselves, but Spencer doesn't want to fathom all of them. It's not like an animal dissection where everything fits together in an objective "right" way, or needs to be explained for a failure to do so. Every person's take on the situation is most likely valid in some way or another.

He gives Andy a small smile and the look in her face is one of understanding, something that he sees so rarely. Even after these nine weeks together, Spencer hasn't gotten used to seeing it from her. Just one look and he feels warmer, safer, as though there may be something to the story from Plato's Aristophanes, at least on an emotional level, since the science is patently ridiculous. If humans used to be four-legged, four-eyed, two-headed creatures, who were rent asunder through divine means and who now must search for their other halves, then the sense of completion she gives him isn't just an irrational sense of community (which he knows isn't _that_ irrational, but it _is_ still primarily motivated by one thing).

If once, several eons ago, some proto-Spencer and a proto-Andy were made genderless and part of one entity, then their finding one another was statistically unlikely, but something to have hoped after, something both of them needed. In spite of all the other bits of contrary evidence, maybe, Spencer thinks there could be some kind of superhuman force out there; that would explain how his meeting Andy worked out as well as it did, and why underlying everything is some sort of pattern.

Once, some months ago, before Andy had even come to CalTech, after a guest lecture hosted by the departments of philosophy and religious studies, Spencer walked in the snow to an off-campus diner with Jeff and Ethan. For the past two hours, they'd listened to some East Coast scholar of the Abrahamic religions discuss the problems of human suffering and reconciling them with the different concepts of God. This group said one thing, but had its logical problems here and there. Another said something different, but had issues A, B, C, and Q with its rationale. These medieval German Ashkenazic pietists said suffering was a show of God's love, and those early Christian gnostics said that earthly pain and misery only proved that the soul didn't belong to the material realm and needed to, eventually, be freed by death.

Jeff took the talk harder than Spencer and Ethan did, and harder than they expected him to, even knowing that it hadn't even been a month yet since his father had died. Over drinks, and even after their dinner came, he sat in pensive silence, barely touching his eggs and coffee. Thought of his father — it didn't take a genius to guess at their existence there — darkened everything about his expression.

When Ethan asked if he was all right, a brief look of offense crossed Jeff's face; he frowned in a way he'd never frowned at Ethan before. He sighed, slipping out of that and into resignation. "Do you guys ever wonder if Nietzsche wasn't just fucking people around with social commentary when he said, 'God is dead'?" he asked quietly. In response to Spencer's request for clarity, he continued: "Well, it's not meant to be read literally, is it? It's not like there was a God, and then He died; it's that we don't understand a world without the way organized religion paints Him but cripple ourselves when we stay limited to that concept of reality. But what if there really just isn't a God at all? Don't you ever think about that?"

"I _think_ you're letting that lecture play your head like Coltrane's sax," Ethan said, far too calmly. The shot of vodka he'd stirred into his coffee probably helped with that; it always made him keep his face straighter while being blunt without a warning. "Let it go. Live your life while you've got it. Most likely, you've only got the one, so make the best of it."

"That doesn't answer my question," Jeff snapped, "or make any fucking sense."

"Well, I — if I may?" Spencer interjected, waiting for Ethan's go-ahead to speak. With the wave and nod from him, Spencer picked his train of thought back up: "I think that what Ethan's trying to say is that there's a lot of ways of perceiving God, which I think that Professor Monroe could have better emphasized than he did, but… all these ideas are just that: ideas. And you can't just let them dictated what you think like that, let alone how you live your life. If you don't make your own ideas, and keep living through the not-knowing, then… what's the point, I guess?"

Ethan pointed at Spencer and nodded, by way of saying that he got the message right. Jeff sighed. "Okay. What do _you_ think about God?"

Spencer shrunk back into his and Ethan's side of the booth, feeling his insides writhe around and wondering if anyone else could see them doing so, if they could see that he wasn't right in the body or the head. Yes, it was ridiculous — of course, no one had x-ray vision like some comic book hero — but they all had to _know_ that something about him wasn't right. "I don't think that's really important," he said quietly. Besides that, he knew every word of the Bible and he'd read more religious writings than Jeff or Ethan cared to know — but he'd learned them in classes, or from Mom, not someone with valid spiritual authority.

"I want to know, Spencer," Jeff insists.

"Well, I mean, I definitely don't think that you should read the Bible literally; there are far too many places where it doesn't line up with that science can prove, and, besides, even if you accept it as divinely inspired, the various issues of translation—"

"Keep on track, genius," Ethan interrupted, looking over his shoulder and making sure the coast was clear before he added more liquor to his coffee from the flask in his coat pocket.

Spencer mumbled an apology to his coffee before he resumed: "All I'm trying to say is that I don't think of God as a bearded old man in the sky. If anything, it's more like the underlying order of things, and the patterns you can find everywhere, even when it looks too random to have one, and the way some things just feel right, or wrong — or like, the odds of one specific human genetic combination happening from the union of two parents are _astronomical_, even without considering _in utero_ factors, chromosomal crossover, or whether or not that zygote will yield a person who actually lives to reproductive age.

"So, if you think about it, the chances of it all being random are fairly slim. It's why I went the engineering route, instead of, like, theoretical physics or astrophysics. I mean, the thought of thinking about that all day? Putting in all that effort to solve these huge problems of how the _entire universe_ works, without objective answers and no way to really tell who's right or not? …Well, it blows _my_ mind, and I've got better things to do with that, you know?"

"Like what, kid?" Ethan asks flatly. "Keep researching? Or are you going to branch out? I might drop dead from shock if you do."

"Leave him alone, lush," Jeff interjected.

But Ethan pressed on: "Because the day you might actually be wrong about something? And the day you take that risk? _Will_ probably be December twenty-first, 2012." He smirked at what must have seemed hilarious; Spencer only shrunk back further in the seat. "Oh come on, Spencer. It was just a joke."

"You know, actually," Spencer responded, retreating to the things he knew, or at least remembered well from the books he'd read. Facts were good; facts were safe; facts were the closest thing he had to being able to truly feel comfortable, and facts were the places he could hide when the problem of his identity seemed, like all his weaknesses and flaws, to be too obvious. As his insides wriggled like a maggot infestation, he told his friends more than was necessary about the Mayan calendar and it didn't do a thing to help how he felt…

And now, a similar discomfort settles in as Spencer gives himself another once-over in Andy's mirror, as he thinks of what she's helped to dress him for today. All this week, and for much of the last, it's been nothing but class, his latest thesis, and going to recruitment talks by various people, in various fields, trying to find something he can do with the rest of his life. Ethan was right, that day in the diner, and he's still right: Spencer doesn't know what he's doing with the rest of his life, and since he's of age, this third PhD has to be his last before he risks a meeting with the so-called 'real world' — and yet, Spencer knows he needs to make a choice. He needs to find _somewhere_ he can work. As much as he would like to be a student forever, it's impossible: private psychiatric care for Mom isn't cheap, so he can't just research his interests until he dies. Besides, as she used to say, his mind is (apparently) a treasure, keeping it locked away in a university is a crime against the world and especially against himself.

So he's listened to everyone who's come to speak — out of state researchers, all earnest and bright-eyed, looking for interns; corporate men in three-piece suits with professionally sterile presentations; people from newspapers, non-profit groups, and law firms (amongst others)… and not a one of them has appealed to him. None of their worlds had a place for a nineteen-year-old genderqueer genius prodigy, who only recently happened upon the word for his identity. Spencer's fingers fumble with his sweater's buttons and Andy puts a hand on his shoulder.

"You're overthinking things again, Doc," she points out. "What's going on in that big, beautiful brain of yours?"

"Chromosomal crossover," he says vaguely.

"You're going to be okay, Spencer," she tells him, gleaning his intention and managing more confidence than he could imagine if he were saying so. "_Someone_ is going to have your career path, and this hot-shot FBI guy is probably all bark, no bite."

"He's a profiler, Andy," he points out, fussing with his collar. "With him, the bark's worse. He'll be able to tell something's not right with me as soon as I go in the lecture hall, and if I _talk_ to him? He'll just have his suspicions confirmed."

She jostles him gently. "Hey. What'd I tell you about that? There is _nothing_ wrong with you; you just exist outside of the traditional definitions of gender roles. Remember?"

"I have an eidetic memory; it's not like I'm going to _forget_."

"I know you're not, sweetheart," she whispers and, unexpectedly, lets his shoulder go to hug him instead. "I know it's not easy, and some days, it'll be impossible, but you need to work on believing that more often. Tell yourself there's nothing wrong with you until you beat it into that thick, brilliant skull of yours."

Spencer promises that he _is_ working on this, and leans into the hug — but he still can't help thinking that this SSA Jason Gideon from Quantico would sooner deconstruct him than recruit him.

As it turns out, SSA Jason Gideon does neither. Instead, he challenges Spencer to a game of chess.

~*~

Throughout the lecture, Spencer keeps coming back to one simple truth: SSA Jason Gideon is not at all what he expected from an FBI agent. So many basic assumptions about them are fallacious by way of being outlandish and melodramatic, yes, but it isn't as though he really expected Gideon to be seven feet tall, solidly built, and and wearing a perfect suit and reflective sunglasses. He simply didn't think that this government employee, a practically legendary man, who's stared down the most evil people in the country, who's only a secret identity away from being a comic book hero, could look so… normal. Kind. More important than his normality and kindness: paternal.

After Doctor Beaton, who taught several of Spencer's old psych classes, introduces him, Gideon comes out wearing jeans and a shirt so rumpled that he might have slept in it. His hair's cut short, and he smiles at everyone, reintroduces himself in a more casual fashion. He has a PowerPoint presentation prepared just like the rest who've come before him, but unlike them, he doesn't refer to it religiously. When he talks about what CalTech students can get out of joining the Bureau, out of being selected to the Behavioral Analysis Unit, he emphasizes not the resume-building, the prestige, or the chances for gaining power or revenue.

Instead, he takes out a little black journal and opens to an ostensibly random page. He tells a story from the early 1980s, about a young woman, just out of college like so many of the students here today soon will be, who, while out walking her dog, was kidnapped. She was the fifth victim of a serial killer, but death wasn't in the cards for her.

"The unknown subject's — or unsub's — MO was to hold his victims for three days," Gideon explains to the hall full of rapt listeners, "during which time he raped and tortured them extensively. Then he would strangle them and leave their bodies along a local highway. He used condoms during the rape, keeping us from identifying him through his genetic material. There weren't any leads, and compelling circumstantial evidences was nearly absent. But our unit came in, and we worked the profile, and, using it, we saved Miranda Arden's life."

The next slide in the presentation isn't like the others. There are no bullet points of information about the BAU. There aren't any words at all, just two pictures of the same woman, one more recent than the other. In the one on the right, the more recent one, she's holding a young child and she wears a wedding ring.

"This is Miranda Arden around the time of her abduction," Gideon tells the throng, pointing at the photo on the left. "And this is her last year, with her son, Eric. This is what you get out of working in our unit: the ability to make these lives happen. You will work to save lives from the darkest parts of humanity, and to help people. It isn't easy work, and it isn't for everyone, but if you think that it might be for you, then I encourage you to apply for the FBI's training program. Thank you."

He leaves the stage. Presentation goes down. Lights go up. A mix of riotous and polite applause from everyone but Spencer, who keeps his hands firmly stuck in his lap. It has to be in his imagination, but he could swear that he saw Agent Gideon looking right at him at the end of the presentation. There's no way that it's real, of course — for one thing, Spencer is in the center of the sixth row, close to the stage, and so it's hardly the case that Agent Gideon was looking _at him_ and is more likely that Gideon was vaguely looking in Spencer's direction. For another, and more importantly, the lecture hall is rather full, and so Agent Gideon could hardly give Spencer any amount of personal attention.

It's a simple, logical conclusion: there is too much evidence against the notions in Spencer's head, and any feeling he had of being singled out was probably just him projecting his fear of being singled out for judgment onto Agent Gideon and the situation. It wouldn't make any sense at all for Agent Gideon to have looked at him specifically, he must have fancied up the sensation of making eye contact with the man, and, even so, the knowledge of this inherently irrational line of thinking doesn't make Spencer's heart stop pounding. It doesn't take away the feeling of Agent Gideon seeing into his soul and knowing that something about him isn't right. It doesn't help Spencer want to leave his seat, and when he finally manages enough will to do so, everyone else has already abandoned the hall.

As he ducks out into the corridor, Spencer finds that his fear has, predictably, betrayed him. He tries to dash down the hall, to get to Andy's, or Ethan's for some card game or other, or the student center for coffee and a game of chess, or _anywhere_ but here — only to hear someone call after him, "Spencer!"

He jolts around to face his addresser: Doctor Beaton, standing there with Agent Gideon. "Come here," his old professor beckons. "Meet Agent Gideon."

Spencer's heart might beat its way out of his chest, at this rate, and the chances of it ever coming back in are slim to none — but he still comes back to Doctor Beaton and Agent Gideon. With his former teacher's hand on his shoulder, feeling a burden where Andy's, Jeff's, or Ethan's would feel a comfort, Spencer shakes Gideon's hand. This man looks innocent enough: middle aged, polite, still just as normal, kind, and paternal as he was on stage… but he's still a profiler. Spencer has read about profilers. They can't read minds, that would just be ridiculous, but they look at all the cues that normal people don't. They read into things that normal people can't. They figure people out, and they _know_ people. Gideon can probably tell from how he shook hands that Spencer isn't right, somehow.

"Jason Gideon," Doctor Beaton introduces them, "Spencer Reid, the student I told you about. He's one of our treasures, and he's working on his… Is it your second PhD or your third, Spencer?"

"Third," Spencer replies quickly. Both of them have to hear how loudly his heart is going at its work. "Your presentation, I — it was very engaging. Thank you, I — I really enjoyed it." That's hardly the right word to use, and Spencer still can't help himself. It's the most _polite_ thing to say, at any rate.

Gideon thanks him in a way that screams of how much he knows of Spencer's anxiety, of the fact that he's ill at ease — not that anyone else, someone who isn't a profiler, couldn't easily tell the same. Instead of leaving well enough alone, Doctor Beaton has to go and ask, "Are you all right, Spencer?"

"Oh, I'm fine," Spencer lies through his teeth, knowing that they more than likely won't believe him. "I was just on my way to meet someone, though, but… thank you, again, Agent Gideon. For the presentation."

And then he makes a break for it. Spencer turns and practically runs for the student center, hearing behind him some hushed tones of shock and apology. They only make him move faster: if, for some reason, he's let Doctor Beaton down by running from his profiler friend, then there is nothing about the situation Spencer wants to know. He has an interest in what they say to each other, but staying around to listen might just do him in.

When he gets to the student center's lounge area, Spencer sets himself up with a chess board and takes all comers. Enough people humor him by handing him victories, and he goes easy on a freshman who doesn't know better than to play him but still wins. Nothing out of the ordinary happens. Spencer can see all of their moves coming, and he knows the exact counter-measures to take in order to work against them. As usual, a small crowd starts to gather, brought around by an invisible barker. The unsaid exhortations can be considered: _Come one, come all, and see the amazing BOY GENIUS. You can't tell if he's male or female, which is good because he doesn't WANT you to, and all we rightly know is this: he's a WIZARD with a CHESS BOARD. Watch as he takes down returning students and researchers nearly twice his age! You don't even need to pay, just let yourself be floored!_

What he doesn't see coming is the slow ripple of surprise that moves through the throng as he sets to work on decimating Eddie Fredricksen's white plastic troops. Spencer has nothing positive to say about Eddie Fredricksen, save that, maybe, he would be more tolerable in circumstances other than sharing graduate coursework. He has a temperament like a cranky old dog and his brain probably isn't all that suited to chemistry research, but due to a family legacy, he feels obliged to get his PhD in it and, in his unbecoming reluctance, attempt to drag everyone down. As he's bragged before, he did his BA and his Master's degree at MIT, and he would sooner convert everyone out of the chemistry department than actually attempt to help with anything he's asked to do. Spencer spares him no kindness, and the small gasps he starts to hear around them only propel him further.

Only after he's soundly taken all of Eddie's pieces does Spencer understand why so many people were making those noises: looking up from the chess board, he sees Agent Gideon amongst the crowd. The agent calmly smiles at him, inscrutable over the sounds of Eddie's protests that, once again, Spencer must have cheated. The feeling he had at the end of the presentation comes back. Barely moving his eyes or head, and seeming soft all the while, Gideon gives him a slow once over; Spencer says nothing, and even if he thought to try, he wouldn't be able to find the words. So unlike his normal idiom, he doesn't look away from Gideon, even though something doesn't feel right, even though this trained profiler can probably see right through his concealing sweater to the terror that lies beneath.

"Hey! _Genius_!" Eddie grouses (with no small hints of irony), snapping his fingers in front of Spencer's face and thereby getting back his attention. "Aren't you going to _say something_? Or tell me you aren't a dirty, Vegas-bred cheater, or statistically prove that you think I'm about as smart as rock salt?"

"I _didn't_ cheat," Spencer tells him flatly. This is the best option: ignore Gideon; focus on Eddie. "And, even if I had, my being from Las Vegas wouldn't have anything to do with it. Besides, if you really _did_ think I'd cheat, you wouldn't play with me, at chess, or at poker, or at anything, really—"

"Except to prove to everyone that you're a card-counting, piece-taking—"

"You play with me because, if you did beat me, it would make you feel validated, and more masculine, and when you lose to me, you get angry. But you can't accept that, maybe, I'm just a better player than you are, so you blame me and call me a cheater." Spencer shrugs, by way of concluding his assessment of Eddie and the situation.

Slamming the table, Eddie storms off and, before anyone else can, Agent Gideon comes to take his place at the table. "Impressive show," he says, his smile still unreadable.

Spencer shrugs again. "Psych 101," he explains half-heartedly. It's not really that noteworthy; surely, Agent Gideon has to understand that. He is, after all, someone who has seen things that _are_ noteworthy. "And the conclusion based on far too much time spent dealing with him and watching him be a jerk to people. It's nothing more than classic frustrated projection: he doesn't _want_ to be studying chemistry, he feels like it should come naturally to him when he's better suited to something else, and he can't stand being shown up, so he blames everyone else and says that it's the rest of us who constitute the problem. …He does it to the other chem PhD researchers, too; it's not like I'm the only one who's seen it."

Gideon waves his hand dismissively and points at the chess board. "I watched you play. How about a game?"

Thinking far too much of his own skills, perhaps, Spencer agrees. The first time, Agent Gideon beats him in under two minutes. Spencer presses forward anyway, and on the second time, he focuses harder. He pays more attention to Gideon's moves, instead of shuffling pieces without real consideration. Gideon still soundly beats him, and Spencer refuses to take that as the be-all and end-all. Considering the circumstances, and considering the odds, the chance of victory is almost negligible — Agent Gideon is older than he is, and watched Spencer play before they started into this; he's probably profiled Spencer based on observing his moves, and he knows how to win… but Spencer Reid won't surrender without a fight. He's been through worse than what this Agent Gideon can give him.

Once again, he loses, but this time, it's closer than before.

People have cleared out by now, and the ones who've stayed have gone off to their own interests with no more desire to see the resident genius playing someone who can beat him. Putting his hands below the table, wringing them once they're out of the way, Spencer looks across the table at this inscrutable man and the unreadable expression he's wearing. Silence lingers between them for too long. Under the scrutiny of Agent Gideon's gaze, Spencer forces his hands apart and holds one out — if he's been impolite until now, then the best move is to correct it. Just correct it, and move on — go home, or to Andy's, or maybe to Jeff's—

Agent Gideon shakes his head and nudges Spencer's hand away. "You don't want to thank me," he says simply.

"…What?" Spencer can't help asking: it's a correct conclusion, but still unexpected.

"I have a few thoughts I've reached, through playing with you," Gideon explains. "If you don't mind." Even if he isn't sure, Spencer tells him that of course he doesn't mind. "Feel free to interrupt, if you think I'm off-base." Spencer nods. "You're obviously bright, a genius-level intellect… or, so your friend Doctor Beaton tells me—"

Spencer ought to know better than to interject the way that he does. Someone like Agent Gideon needs to be listened to, but, even so, Spencer's mouth starts spewing facts before he thinks to stop it: "If you believe in the traditional methods of quantifying intelligence — which are all rather reductionist, I might add — then… I mean, I don't like bragging, but I do have an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and I can read 20,000 words per minute—"

"That sounds like genius to me," Gideon prompts. "And Doctor Beaton's forwarded some of your papers to me. You're obviously talented… but the language you used is compelling. 'I might add.' 'I don't like bragging.' 'I _do_ have' and 'I _can_ read'… You distance yourself from the important verbs; you emphasize that you have the capability, but not that you exercise it. When we played, after every time I beat you, you spent more time thinking about your moves the next time. You try to downplay your intelligence, probably due to years of it being misunderstood by your peers, even your teachers or your parents. You wear these clothes…" Gideon gestures toward Spencer's sweater. "They're sensible, professional — and cut too large for you. It's more than just a personal style; you're trying to hide something from people."

Spencer feels his mouth going dry, and his heart beating faster to match it. He looks down to the chess board, then to Gideon, then to the bulletin board on the wall. Back to Gideon. To his hands curled up on the chess board, to the chess pieces. To Gideon. He considers interjecting, but the thought just makes his heart rate spike higher.

"I think that what you're trying to hide is obvious," Gideon continues. "I think that you're trying to hide yourself. I think that you don't have many close friends, and I think that you are deeply afraid of being wrong, of making decisions that make you suffer or someone else suffer. You weigh your options almost compulsively, and in detail that others would find exacting. What was the topic of your last dissertation?"

"Identifying Non-obvious relationship factors using cluster weighted modeling and geographic regression," Spencer answers without a second thought, almost addressing the black queen instead of Gideon.

"You want to find meaning in things." Gideon's interpretation hits too close to home. Spencer's toes curl in his shoes. "Especially when they appear to be meaningless — you like a challenge, even if you act as though you don't. You don't feel as though you know who you are, but you know who you don't want to be. You reject the 'genius' label because you think that it puts you into a box — a _reductionist_ one, one that doesn't include everything about you. …You don't connect with most people, and you don't know where you fit in with them, but you don't hate them. You want a purpose for your life, but you aren't sure where it is. …How would you like to help people?"

Spencer swallows and forces himself to look back up at Gideon. "You mean… how would I like to do what you do?"

"There are plenty of other uses for your talent, Doctor Reid," Gideon says, picking the black queen up, delicately fingering the shiny plastic. "But it is my professional opinion that the Bureau needs a mind like yours. The people we help need you."

Spencer shuffles his feet under the table and feels slightly sick. But, still, there's something he can't deny, and he can't stop himself from pointing out: "If I go out to Quantico, go through the training program and everything… there's still no guarantee that I'd get appointed to the BAU, let alone your team."

Gideon's smile is, at once, calming and conspiratorial. "If you come out there, then you can leave the rest to me."

With an analysis that accurate, there isn't anyway that Gideon doesn't _know_. All of his words step around the matter of Spencer's gender identity, and betray his knowledge of it… but he's still offering. It could be a mistake… but everything he's said is _right_. Nodding slowly, Spencer agrees, "I guess I'll see you in Virginia, then?"

"Yes. …Unless you'd like to play another game before we go our separate ways?"

Spencer takes that offer, even though the chances of losing are stacked well against him. It's a calming thought, that he'll have some place to go when school is over — and someone waiting for him there, besides; someone who actually wants him in their workplace — and that, when he shows up, he'll find a comfortable acceptance.

~*~

Spencer's first day in the BAU disproves the notion of comfortable acceptance that, for two-and-a-half years, has seen him through the more difficult times. Training, itself, was challenging in pockets, more than overall. After one day, Ethan left. Spencer wrote to Andy as often as to Mom, but getting her letters back wasn't the same as having her to run to directly. Unlike most of his fellow trainees, he had more difficulty with using a gun than any other thing they covered, even the physical challenges.

Through everything, he perseveres, and he remains aware of the fact that Gideon keeps tabs on his progress. The nineteen-year-old three-time-doctor doesn't fall away, but every go at training shapes him, slowly, into an FBI agent, mentally and physically. When he enters a room, any room, he knows exactly where his blind spots are and, if no one's watching, he starts to check them, just so he keeps the motions committed to memory.

On his first day of appointment to the BAU, Spencer assumes that it's natural when he shows up for work wearing one of his sweaters. He's meeting new people, and he's stronger now, after two years of enduring obstacle courses and drills meant to ensure that he can handle whatever the job will throw at him, but he doesn't expect for Gideon to take him aside for an undefined conversation. He doesn't expect that, after meeting Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner and Agent Derek Morgan, expert on obsessional crimes, Gideon will lead him off and whisper that really, he doesn't need to hide anything while he's working here. There are rules, he explains, against inter-team profiling; Hotch and Morgan won't try to take apart his psyche and put it back together.

Even if Gideon is only trying to help, or even if he thinks he is, Spencer gleans the implication without a second thought: in the one place where he didn't expect for this to be an issue, he needs to be more masculine. The emerging patterns to his clothing choices seem subtle enough, to him. He wears everything loose enough for his comfort, but not so loose as to attract attention. Short-sleeved shirts and ties work fine. Perhaps, Spencer thinks, he ought to model himself off of Gideon, instead of the other engineers from Cal-Tech, but it works well enough.

It's uncomfortable, but Spencer does't say a word. Not to Andy, or to Mom, and certainly not to anyone on the team — as it is, they think he's socially awkward. He more than deserves that criticism. Anything that could take away how Gideon smiles at him, though, needs to be avoided. It's too encouraging, the way that Gideon takes pride in Spencer's insights, and it bolsters his confidence, the way he calls him "Doctor Reid."

If it takes personal discomfort to have this father figure, then Spencer can handle it. He's handled worse before.

~*~

In hindsight, Spencer won't say what made him think that going up to JJ's apartment was a good idea.

He doesn't remember what he thought before he asked her out. Gideon handed him the box with the tickets, and he said that _they_ weren't going together. He pointed toward JJ. Spencer's heart pounded on the walk over, and while he asked her. At the game, even though she laughed so easily, he felt lightheaded. Her ponytail bobbed every time her team scored a touchdown, and Spencer couldn't take his eyes off the way her jersey moved on her body — it showed her curves, just enough to let people know she was a woman, but not enough that she looked overly feminine.

He was supposed to be attracted to her, wasn't he?

Bringing her home, Spencer pulled his car into her apartment's garage. Statistically, it was safer for them this way; there was less of a chance of her getting hurt if she was closer to the door and had him watching over her. He feels as though someone shot him full of novocaine.

"Spence," she says with her carefree smile. "Do you want to come up and see my place?"

He follows her upstairs, and into a bottle of wine she got for Christmas. He follows her into the bedroom. He follows her lead when she starts kissing him, and when she reaches for his belt. They end up naked on her bed, clothes strewn around her room. Mechanically, they have sex, because she wants it and he thinks that he should too. Every inch of her is beautifully crafted, warm, soft, and inviting. His, instead, feels too awkward and too gangly for this situation. She keeps smiling, but he only feels exposed. He tries getting closer to her, and he tries kissing her more, to make it more romantic; all he finds is that proximity heightens his awareness of his difference.

The finish is unspectacular. She humors him anyway. He leaves her room, despite the wine, and Spencer puts himself to bed where no one has the opportunity to look at him and judge him male.

~*~

Trouble, Spencer has often been told, comes in threes, and he looks for it compulsively after his and JJ's date at the Redskins' game. Everything could be indicative of a growing threat, but, outside of work and his problems with his firearms qualification, nothing seems to come. It's only in retrospect that he picks out the most troublesome triad he could have encountered: Elle Greenaway, Emily Prentiss, and Derek Morgan.

With Elle, there's a spark, and she knows it. They don't deal with each other much upon her arrival to the unit, three years after his own, but Spencer can't even think of how to change that: she's intelligent, and strong. She's beautiful, and the sort of girl Spencer never thought he'd meet anywhere, let alone actually get to hold a conversation with. And they do hold conversations, about more than just their work. True, they start about work, but they branch out: she humors his fondness for Star Trek, and he listens as she describes her childhood love of self-defense classes, how she used to take down the boys on her Brooklyn block at judo and karate because they took offense to her being female and in "their realm." Before everything with JJ, Elle tells him to try asking someone out; what she doesn't know is that he's had dreams, before, about asking her.

On a stopped train in Texas, Spencer throws himself headlong into a hostage situation, knowing that Elle is in there and that he can't make eye contact with her. He doesn't plan to stay behind, but it works out that he does: Gideon may be able to talk the Footpath Killer into a frenzy; and he got Vincent Shyer worked up enough to reveal more than he ever factored into his kidnapping plans; and Hotch has made Phillip Dowd, a God's honest narcissist, believe that they had common interests — but Spencer knows how to talk to paranoid schizophrenics. And to his credit, he listens to his bosses: he doesn't act until it seems like there's no other choice, until Doctor Bryar has said enough that Spencer can make something work.

In his head, Spencer hears Mom's voice, and how she would recount to him her various encounters with these same experiences, with the disembodied "friends" and "helpers" who would tell her the strangest things, impart to her fancies filled with dream logic, and insinuate that things as they were could not be left alone — and, just as clearly, he remembers all of his attempts at making it all make sense. Just before Dad left, on a night when he was working late, Spencer remembers Mom insisting that they weren't safe in the house anymore, that some vague something was wrong with Dad and that they needed to leave _now_, before it all could fall to ruin. Curling up in the back seat of her classic Volvo, wrapping one of her old sweaters around himself the way he'd come to do almost every night after working at the BAU, Spencer let her drive for thirty minutes. When she seemed calm enough, he talked her down; they were back home before Dad was — but not all things work out so well.

Spencer doesn't _fail_, not outright anyway; on the contrary, he succeeds quite admirably. The shot that disables Doctor Bryar isn't lethal, and, given proper care, he ought to be physically fine. More importantly, he saved Elle's life, and, as a joke, he tells her so. His mind races as he looks at her, and then it all blanks out. For today, he has been skilled enough with words and seen success enough from his verbal proficiency. Asking him to accomplish anything more might be too much. As Gideon is quick to remind him, when they have a moment alone on the plane back to Virginia: the prognosis on Doctor Bryar's injury is positive; Spencer did a good thing in talking the man down, and he did as best he could; he is only human and he has boundaries.

His silence lasts, almost unbroken, throughout the better part of that trip, and it reaches its culmination when they all come back to the office. While Hotch and Gideon go to their offices, and JJ, Elle, and Morgan head for their desks, Spencer finds himself waylaid by Garcia. Coming from around a corner — which, immediately, he chides himself for not checking, even though, at the office, he has no reason to do so — she grabs him in a tight hug. After two years of working together, she finally apologizes for having disappeared out of his life so suddenly back in California.

"Baby Genius, I am _so sorry_," she tells him, her normal effervescence shaking with the remnants of some strange kind of terror. Yes, they share a team, and it's true, he was just in a hostage situation, facing down an armed schizophrenic, but can she really have been that worried about the likelihood of him returning intact? "If I could've explained it all then, I would've, but… I wasn't thinking straight, and… I was _so scared_ with you out there, especially after Des Plaines—"

"Garcia?" he asks awkwardly, struggling a bit under her hold. "Can — can I have my ribcage back?"

She releases him, looking up with a relieved smile. He neglects to mention his most strenuous objection: this shirt already shows too much of Spencer, as per Gideon's unofficial dress code for him, and Garcia was too close, too intimate with a misleading form, one that Spencer prefers to keep to himself.

"So we're okay? …Friends?" she asks him, beaming.

He nods, and agrees that they're okay, and he even gives her a smile. She makes him promise with a pinky swear. It will be another two-and-a-half years until Spencer learns why she really disappeared, and then, he decides he can understand why she took so long explaining it to him. Over Garcia's shoulder now, he can see Elle, sitting at her desk, with her lips curled in a smile that seems to know too much.

The spark is there between them, him and Elle, and it lingers pleasantly for long enough, smoldering with the warmth of a campfire in the rain. It flickers. It flares. Things happen and its survival comes into question several times, and yet it perseveres, coming up but never gaining power enough to destroy them. Sometimes, Spencer even dares to think that Elle might feel it too. The chances of something happening are next to none, and he is certain that he could live with that, as long as Elle feels something too.

When the Fisher King nearly kills her, Spencer thinks the spark may well just die: Elle survives, and yet, he has no idea what to say to her. Thinking of her, he sends flowers and a book — _The Handmaid's Tale_; briefly, he considers _Empty Planet_, an old favorite, but Margaret Atwood, he decides, would most likely be the sort of science fiction Elle would prefer — but he only visits her in the hospital when the whole team does, or when JJ, Morgan, and Garcia come by without Gideon and Hotch.

It's in Dayton where things rekindle properly, only to flare up quickly and die off. He goes to see her after she's been taking the case hard, and, after he awkwardly attempts to reassure her that she beat Garner, they toast to winning. They clink glasses and the logic seems to make so much sense. Garner's dead, he blew himself up, and Elle's still alive: Spencer knows better from his own experiences, but every day he isn't helpless is a day that his high school tormentors lose. And every day Elle comes to work is another one that Randall Garner doesn't get what he wanted when he tried to kill her. Falling back on logic is comfortable.

Kissing Elle is more so. Beyond the fact that she initiates, Spencer isn't sure how it comes together. One moment, they're trading words like teammates, as though the spark never existed, as though nothing has ever laid beneath their verbal sparring — _"Did they teach you that in FBI school?" "No, they taught me that in Brooklyn."_ The next, she comes over to his chair. She straddles his hips slowly, and, in a fevered rush, they kiss as though their lives depend on this meeting of their mouths. Time slows down, and yet goes faster, and yet it doesn't matter; in the end, it's all relative anyway, and more important than any perception of time is Spencer's perception of Elle rubbing her hips into his, jamming their mouths together, and their tongues, and teeth. It's more important that he kisses back, and that he manages to keep his squirming internalized when his body reacts to the arousal in its typical, betraying, _male_ fashion.

Even if he doesn't squirm, there's still something off enough for Elle to notice and she slows the pace accordingly. She shifts her legs around him, and, although she doesn't leave his lap, she strategically avoids his primary sex characteristics. After several moments, the kissing pauses.

"You're not really like other guys, are you, Reid?" she asks him, running her fingers back through his hair, barely pulling back from him. There's hardly space enough for breath between them, and lingering where personal space should be is the sense that Elle _knows_. However she's come into the knowledge, she has it now and that's what matters more. Trying to find the words he needs to reply to her, to explain how he isn't like them, he comes up short and shakes his head in lieu of verbalizing things. More communication is nonverbal than verbal anyway. She leans in and kisses him again. After several moments pass, she pulls away, to whisper: "I appreciate it. Different is good."

They spend the night together, entangled on her hotel bed, but they don't have sex. They get naked, and they share each other's warmth, and, acutely, Spencer is aware of the fact that she has everything about him at her disposal. She breathes on his neck in a way that makes him shiver pleasantly, that takes him out of his head for long enough to appreciate the sensation of it more than the fact that she has full access to his body; he touches her everywhere — everywhere except her under the hem of her shirt, which comes off last. Once, he tries, only to have her swat his hand away and say that she's not ready for him to touch her there. When she gets off her blouse, he sees the scars all across her chest and stomach, a large one with several curves coming out of both cups of her bra, hacked up in rage and stitched back together with surgical precision. Her breathing short, she guides his hand up the muscles of her stomach, takes his fingers up and down her scars.

"My doctor says they're healing nicely," she tells him, and he snaps his gaze back up to her unfathomable brown eyes. He supposes that they look like it. "Maybe they do," she sighs. "I can never tell… You know, Reid, you'd think that it would all heal eventually. Time's supposed to make things better, or take them away… When I worked special victims, that's what I told all the women I worked with, all the ones who got left alive… I don't know if I think it's true anymore."

"Sometimes it's not about them going away," Spencer says quietly, looking away again. His eyes don't leave her scars, her hand on his hand; and his memories, unlike his body, wander away from him. "But more about how you can control them, or make them seem less prominent."

"That didn't sound like the Doctor Reid I'm used to." She runs a hand down his cheek.

"I've had a lot of practice," he explains, leaning into her palm. He closes his eyes and tries to stop himself from speaking. This isn't about him, it's about Elle, he knows this and yet he doesn't manage: "At making the damages less prominent. ...Buffing them out, finding the right defenses, being Doctor Reid instead of Spencer."

"Spencer," she whispers, nudging his chin up. "Look at me." When he opens his eyes, she states plainly: "You're stronger than you think you are. Or anyway, you're stronger than me."

"You're plenty strong," he disagrees, squinting. "I mean… I've never been attacked by an unsub in my own home and left for dead."

"I survive because I don't want to die yet. That doesn't make me strong."

Not three days later, she shoots a suspect in cold blood. And then, all too effervescent, she disappears, the second woman to run out of Spencer's life. When he calls, she doesn't answer. She lets all of JJ's calls go to voicemail, and Spencer's go the same route; her leaving soon becomes official and Spencer stops trying to call her. He just wonders if there was anything more that he could have done to keep her from killing that man, and all sources seem to indicate that no, there wasn't. Nothing ever happens to make the meaning of her words clearer.

Several months later, a phantom enters his life to mirror hers. It claws into his life, rips down his defense mechanisms and mauls all his shields until they're no longer recognizable. All his neuroses and imperfections are laid bare and magnified, on full display for everyone to see. More than anything, he wishes that she would be there to help him with the pain, to help share the burden no one else on the team can understand, the way that they shared their moment together in Dayton — and yet, he knows why she had to go, and he can't blame her for it: their job weighs heavy on the soul.

~*~

Before he meets his phantom, though, Spencer meets Emily Prentiss, an ambassador's daughter and the one with the unlucky position of filling Elle's place on the team. She doesn't come immediately. For weeks — just over five and a half of them — Elle's desk is empty, and the team goes on cases as if she wasn't even there.

Emily Prentiss, the ambassador's daughter, shows up out of nowhere, or so it seems, and the first thing Spencer thinks of when he sees her is Alexa Lisbon. Like his high school tormentor, she is beautiful — the chiaroscuro contrast of her hair and skin is straight out of a Caravaggio, and she is possessed with the bone structure that Mom would describe as "fine." Also like Alexa, she is intelligent, and as soon as JJ introduces her to the team, he can't help thinking that she might have some history as a puller of strings, a manipulator of men. It would fit with her appearance, Spencer thinks: the earnest girls, like JJ, are sisters, mothers, friends, and, through all their faces, speak honestly; the striking women, like Elle, burn bright but can't stay in one place for long; and the beauties, like Emily, either know their comeliness or they don't, and, if they know, they will almost surely put it to questionable use.

On their first trip out together, she brings this reading of her into question: on the one hand, Spencer wants to figure out why a stunning beauty with a pedigree like her would bother with the BAU, but, on the other, he has no desire to share an adventure on which Gideon only wanted to invite him. Time alone with Gideon is special, and during their game of chess, neither of them pays her much mind… until she offers the insight that Gideon would have beaten Spencer once again. The way she says it is meant to be helpful, and the awkward way she laughs like it's a joke, but Spencer doesn't take it lightly.

For long enough, a couple months anyway, he appears to fall off of her radar: they work together, but there's nothing more to it, really. Slowly, she reveals more about herself — the awkwardness isn't a figment of Spencer's imagination and she showcases it in small doses. One day, she leaves a Vonnegut novel and a _Scientific American_ on her desk when she wanders away from it. …But, overwhelmingly, they have nothing to say to each other outside the context of their office.

The only time she tries to have a real conversation with him comes out of nowhere, with the force and impact of knowing that bullet could have hit your head and not a wall. Storming out of a Houston, Texas homeless shelter, she questions him. He's too strung out to see past the forgetful haze of Dilaudid. All he knows is that she tries to point out that he ought to be doing his job better, that something's wrong and that he can't allow anyone to think so. Too easily, he falls back into patterns that he shouldn't, trying to protect himself when doing so is the last thing that he needs. Later on, when he's alone, it hits him that maybe she really did pay enough attention to know how to criticize him.

It's not until even later, a month into sobriety that Spencer tries apologizing. One day, he comes in before Emily. When she comes into the office, there's a potted peace lily on her desk. With the peace lily comes a note, scrawled in Spencer's awkward mix of printing and cursive: _I tried to think of exactly how to say it, but I couldn't think of anything else. I'm sorry, Emily._

She sends a text back to him, halfway through the day, when he's stopped expecting it: _Apology accepted._

Even so, even if this one time worked out well, he still has trouble finding the right things to say.

~*~

Derek Morgan is a contradiction, one that both needs to be discussed and doesn't. He plays the tough guy, and, undeniably, he's tougher than Spencer, but he talks to Emily about books where he thinks no one can overhear them. Spencer's mixing sugar in his coffee while they talk about Vonnegut and Emily blowing it with some guy because she referenced Kilgore Trout, and it isn't that he only thought of Morgan as some muscle-bound meat-head — he wouldn't be in the BAU, if he fell into that archetype — but Morgan's never talked about books with _him_.

Spencer knows that he has no right to be jealous. The attraction is one-sided and it always has been: Morgan doesn't see him as anything more than Genius Doctor Reid, the danger-prone prodigy, the brainiac kid who can't keep himself out of trouble, the can't-get-a-date-or-shoot-a-gun-correctly loser in distress who needs big, bad Morgan to come protect him. In its own way, it's even worse than getting close enough to know that Spencer isn't as his biological sex purports. If he got close enough to learn that, then they'd share something; if he could be trusted with sensitive information (and seeing as he ran to Gideon and Hotch with _nightmares_, Spencer has to conclude that he would do the same with an unobtrusive, but ever-present, difference of gender identity), then Spencer could let him in further; if Morgan were to ask, or to show any interest, then Spencer would more than likely slip up and tell him everything… but he doesn't. All there is between them amounts to their bantering, the team, and dreams Spencer wouldn't share with anyone, not even under the threat of death.

And a dichotomy in how Morgan behaves. He acts, sometimes, like it means nothing to him when they rib each other. He throws around jokes and the name "pretty boy" the same way he calls Garcia "baby girl" and "hot stuff." Everything he does suggests his line of thinking, and Spencer can assume how it goes: Spencer will only ever be a brain to Morgan, practically on the same level as their victims, since, every so often, he'll pull something out of nowhere, but mostly he just walks into perilous situations that he can't handle. When they do talk seriously, Spencer usually instigates this shift in their paradigm… and, yet, Derek's written home about him, and it doesn't seem to fit. If Derek doesn't really care that much about what underlies their conversations, or about Spencer, beyond their lowest common denominator of the team, if they wouldn't even be friendly without the BAU connecting them, then why would he write to his mother and his sisters enough that they could identify him based on one tangent from a conversation?

For all he's trained to do so, Spencer just can't fathom this dichotomy. It doesn't make any sense.

~*~

Of course, maybe Morgan isn't really the third trouble. It's just as likely that it could be Lila Archer.

Lila — spontaneous Lila, who came out of nowhere the same way that lightning strikes or seemingly pleasant dogs turn around to bite, the same way that every case does. Only she kissed him, something no one had done for a long while before her, and even when he kissed her in return, she didn't recoil from him.

Sometimes, now, when he makes a late-night run for groceries, Spencer lingers too long by the celebrity gossip tabloids. He flips through them idly, all the while feeling his brain cry out so as to question what he's forcing on it, and always, _always_ feeling _someone_ looking at him as he does so. Whether it's the older woman who lives in the apartment down the hall from his own, one of the college kids who works the graveyard shift, or someone Spencer doesn't care to identify, matters little; Spencer feels their eyes, and he knows what they're thinking. He knows that he doesn't look like the type for _Us Weekly_, _OK_, or the other ones. Even though he's grown accustomed to it, even though he knows that these people don't care, his stomach squirms and he wonders if they _know_.

But, even though he needs to stop to think, to pause, to calm himself, he can't help looking through the trashy magazines for any news of Lila. She's doing well, it always seems. The work keeps coming in for her, and among the stories wondering about her weight, her "sordid" trysts, and her spending habits, he always finds pictures of her with a revolving cast of men. Not a one of them resembles Spencer. They come in different shapes, with different names and backgrounds, different levels of personal hygiene, but one common thing unites them all: every single one of them is, somehow, male, and, more importantly, they are comfortable with that designation being given to them.

Love isn't simpler for everyone else; Spencer sees too many pieces of evidence to contradict that notion. Even so, as he looks at Lila and her more masculine companions, he wonders if things wouldn't be easier were he to feel at home in the sex that his genes gave him.


End file.
